Save old version of edited file with suffix

[klauweg]

I had vim configured to keep an old version of files while saving. In my case it is stored with "~" suffix.

Is there any possibility to do this with micro editor?

Thank you very much!

[Andriamanitra]

You can write a plugin that uses the preSave hook. The following seems to work (add it to your init.lua or save it as $HOME/.config/micro/plug/copykeeper/copykeeper.lua):

go_os = import("os")
go_io = import("io")

function preSave(bufpane)
    local path = bufpane.Buf.AbsPath

    local srcfile, err = go_os.Open(path)

    local destfile, err = go_os.Create(path .. "~")

    local bytesWritten, err = go_io.Copy(destfile, srcfile)

    srcfile:Close()
    destfile:Close()
end

Note that code above doesn't do any error handling at all so you might want to adjust it a little bit (you might have problems if saving the copy would need permissions).

[dustdfg]

It looks like you have tons of custom plugins for micro. Do you have a repo for them or the dotfiles is the only place where you collected them?

[Andriamanitra]

@dustdfg I keep the ones with just a couple of functions in the dotfiles, they're not really intended to be directly used by others except as reference material for their own implementations (there's no documentation on how to use them, and I often change them on a whim).
I have separate repos for µlsp (LSP plugin) and gotoctags (which is a fork of micro-jump).

[klauweg]

Oh, thank you for your quick reply!
It's impressive how easy it is.
Apparently i should concentrate more on doing this lua stuff :-).

[klauweg]

I'm using Andriamanitras suggestion for nearly a year now. I have added some error handling and it worked perfect.
Now i've discovered that the preSave action isn't triggered when saving is caused by Ctrl-Q.
Maybe i could use a preQuit action also. But there is the chance to answer the quit/save dialog with "no". Then it would be wrong to overwrite the backup file.
One solution may be to reimplement the quit dialog in lua. But i hope there is an easier solution?

[Andriamanitra]

If that's the case it's probably a bug. I think all ways of saving a file should trigger preSave/onSave events.

[klauweg]

hm, ok, then i will file a bug report...